Tom Selmon’s Beijing Beauty

China. A very big coun­try fea­tur­ing 56 minor­it­ies and one Party line. A very tra­di­tion­al soci­ety which offers little to no room for, or at least frowns upon, those who do not toe the line.

中国，一个拥有着 56 个民族的独党执政大国；一个十分传统的社会，这个社会几乎没有给那些敢于打破常规的人留下什么发展空间。

Think those women who have long bid Adieu to the prime age of 27 and still remain single (the so-called “leftover women”). Think our plain high-school Jane who doesn’t show up at her man­dat­ory extra­cur­ricular math, Eng­lish and piano les­sons (and that’s just Monday) and instead opts to sneak­ily get out of her track­suit uni­form and chill out on a hutong rooftop. Think homo­sexu­als in gen­er­al (seen “Shock The Gay Away”, any­one?). Or think drag queens – or any man/​woman who feels more com­fort­able dressed as the oppos­ite sex, for that mat­ter.

Chinese cul­ture sports some of the most andro­gyn­ous art forms you’ll find in the over­all glob­al cul­tur­al his­tory. 中国的双性文化是世界文化历史中雌雄同体艺术形式的集中体现。

I’ve per­son­ally always con­sidered these “judg­ment­al” calls made in Chinese soci­ety to be quite iron­ic, espe­cially given that some of the nation’s most prided and his­tor­ic­al art forms, think Beijing opera (jingju), are among the most andro­gyn­ous (avant-la-lettre) you can spot in glob­al cul­tur­al his­tory. In the par­tic­u­lar case of opera, it is cus­tom for male act­ors to take on the female leads. And they must train, mas­ter­ing the elab­or­ate makeup, words and staple opera “man­ner­isms” for years on end, in order to just be allowed to get up on that stage.

Tom Sel­mon fol­lows and cap­tures their voy­age and out­look — both on life as in its most lit­er­al sense — on camera.Tom Sel­mon 用相机真实地反映了他们的生活轨迹和他们对生活的态度。

Either way, it’s usu­ally these social “quirks” (I think using the term “out­casts” would be overly dra­mat­ic) who are the most appeal­ing or inter­est­ing to us out­siders. Sexu­al­ity in China is a con­fus­ing and very much “alive” con­cept in a rap­idly chan­ging scen­ario that has only been con­ceived some three dec­ades ago. People, espe­cially those born after 1990, are seek­ing and devel­op­ing their indi­vidu­al­it­ies, a top­ic which can raise ques­tions in terms of their own gender and sexu­al­ity.

Their jour­neys may at times be con­tro­ver­sial or con­fus­ing yet always beau­ti­ful and out­stand­ing. (You may take the lat­ter lit­er­ally.) Enter Brit Tom Sel­mon, doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher. Sel­mon has chosen to swim the some­times stormy waters of the cur­rent change in think­ing about gender and sexu­al­ity among China’s 20-somethings. He fol­lows and cap­tures their voy­age and out­look (both on life as in its most lit­er­al sense) on cam­era.

Sexu­al­ity and gender fluid­ity in China are very much “alive” con­cepts set with­in the country’s rap­idly chan­ging social land­scape. Brit­ish Beijing-based doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher Tom Sel­mon is one artist keep­ing a close eye, lit­er­ally, on China’s evolving rela­tion­ship with non-bin­ary iden­ti­fic­a­tion.

Sel­mon fol­lows altern­at­ive youth cul­ture and has cre­ated an impress­ive body of work that explores street fash­ion, drag cul­ture and the cul­tur­al con­text of mod­ern-day Beijing.

Sel­mon 跟踪拍摄另类青年文化，从街头时尚、变装文化、到文化背景中的现代北京，他的创作充满了魔性令人着迷。

Tom Sel­mon spoke to us about his move from Lon­don to Beijing and his fas­cin­a­tion with the “indi­vidu­al beau­ty” of drag queens :

Tom Sel­mon 跟我们讲述了他从伦敦来到北京的经过，以及他所感受到的变装文化的 “ 独特魅力 ” ：

It may sound silly, but I just thought pho­to­graphy would be some­thing I’d be rather good at. I’ve always wanted to cre­ate things, even when I was young­er, and pho­to­graphy allows you to cre­ate some­thing instantly.

听上去好像有点傻，我觉得摄影是我很擅长的事。我一直很喜欢去创造，即使在我小的时候，而摄影可以让我瞬间就创造出来一些东西。

I was pre­vi­ously based in Lon­don — shoot­ing fash­ion, among oth­er things. Aside from edit­or­i­al under­tak­ings, I was attempt­ing to expand my focus and shoot dif­fer­ent scenes in Lon­don, such as the drag and LGBT. I am gay myself and there­fore the ‘bond’ or affil­i­ation was already there.

One friend of mine, already liv­ing in Beijing, told me about everything going on there, the changes in soci­ety and I thought I’d check it out.

我的一个定居在北京的朋友告诉我有关北京的一切，社会中发生的变化等等，因此我想亲自到那儿去看看。

I dis­covered after arriv­ing in Beijing, that the pho­to­graph­ic pos­sib­il­it­ies were abso­lutely fant­ast­ic. So I stayed. Opposed to tra­di­tion­al Chinese soci­etal norms, the gen­er­a­tion born post-1990 are far more open, and open-minded, about the con­cepts of gender, sex and sexu­al­ity. Which, in turn, is great for me as a pho­to­grapher who aims to doc­u­ment all sorts of people. For me, these Chinese post-90s cer­tainly stand out from the massive Chinese crowds.

I am a pho­to­grapher of people. I like to doc­u­ment people from all walks and scenes of life. I do espe­cially adore male beau­ty, the defin­i­tions of the male. That’s prob­ably also why I think drag queens often look strik­ing.

When makeup touches male bone struc­ture, I think it’s magic­al. I like extreme beau­ty as well as soft, nat­ur­al beau­ty. It’s less of a fas­cin­a­tion with drag, but def­in­itely a real fas­cin­a­tion with men.

Some type of gender or sexu­al revolu­tion, as I’ve called it before, is tak­ing place across the streets of Beijing. The city and its people have some kind of ‘flow’ going for them. Both gender and sexu­al bor­ders are being crossed and are, in fact, slowly fad­ing.

在北京的街头性别和性的变革正在进行着。城市和居住在这里的人们好像在被一种“潮流”感染着，性别和性的界限正在被跨越，慢慢地变得模糊起来。

They are put­ting them­selves out there. They dare to bare them­selves. Which is exactly that what makes them very so attract­ive to my lens. It’s a kind of innate beau­ty for me. One that also shows in the face.